Initially, I watched Hana Gartner interviewing Margaret Atwood on “Take 30” Sept. 27, 1977 as a complement to Dancing Girls, and ostensibly that’s the subject. But it’s more interesting as an example of the kind of preconceptions and judgements Atwood’s faced throughout her career.

You don’t learn about the book (MA’s eleventh); you learn how to respond to an interviewer making statements rather than asking questions, how to respond to someone’s anger about feeling SomeKindaWay.

“All the stories are based in this,” the host says: sadness. She sounds partly hurt, partly angry and describes feeling that the stories are filled with relationships like trains—with women on one track and men the other—nobody connecting. It doesn’t sounds like she’s inviting conversation, it sounds like she’s levelling accusations. How dare she tell these sad, sad stories.

Sad Stories

It appears they might agree, momentarily, that literature should provoke strong reactions in readers; but Gartner clarifies that it’s a strong sadness, and the finger-wagging is audible. (Later, Gartner complains there are many lonely people—in the stories—and Atwood says there are many lonely people—in the world—and the silence thrums.)

MA appears taken aback; she asks Gartner which stories and says at least one of them is funny, but Gartner says that’s only “gallows humour” which “ultimately turns out rotten”—in other words, she still feels sad. Is it the story or the feeling that’s “rotten”, MA asks aloud: the situation, Gartner responds, usually a situation between a man and a woman.

Does the Story Ordering Matter?

Despite the joke MA offers next, tension remains. She jokes again, about not remembering which stories are included and asks for Gartner’s copy. If I’d been on camera in this moment, you’d’ve seen my own eyes narrow with distrust.

Because it’s possible this is true; authors touring have often lost touch with that book, having passed it off to an editor a year or two prior to focus on other work. In this case, with stories previously published elsewhere, that’d add to any disorientation.

But it doesn’t feel like MA’s forgotten; she seems to seek a moment to look downward and gather herself. (Also, she’s too quick, with later discussion of a story, to identify it as the second one—Gartner is talking over her, but it’s audible.)

Gartner laughs loudly and queries after MA’s “quizzical” look because they are her own stories and MA explains the first story goes back to 1962 (“The War in the Bathroom”, which I wrote about last MARM)—“that was pretty sad” Gartner inserts—whereas the final four were written closer to 1977.

The Obligation to be Joyful (or, What She Should’ve Written)

The first story, MA says is a “down” story but the last an “up” story…and isn’t that preferable to an “up” towards “down” trajectory. It feels like she’s inviting a shared moment here, but Gartner says she’s not complaining about the ordering of the stories, she wants to point out how “dismal” they are.  “I thought you left out a lot of joy” Gartner says—left out understanding and compromise.

Gartner doesn’t name a story but describes one (the second story, “The Man from Mars”) which doesn’t help. MA’s visibly surprised by Gartner’s description of how the woman in the story starts to enjoy being victimized by a man and how the woman and man never get to know each other. At one point MA’s eyes flit to the camera with disbelief, at another she seems to flinch. (It’s so uncomfortable, I pause and debate continuing.)

On Victimization and Survival

Later it seems like, in that moment, MA was debating whether/how to reroute the conversation. Because it feels like Gartner has invented elements and you wonder if she actually read the story. In my own reading (linked, above), it’s not about a male-female relationship as much as it’s about class and anti-immigration sentiment. It’s hard to see how Gartner has pulled out the male-female “situation”, because it’s not about a potential romance but generational and cultural conflict.

MARM 2023 PLANS

Each week I’ll share links to some online sources, so that anyone with a few minutes can join in the celebrations. Some poetry and flash fiction, some interviews and reviews, some fresh reads and rereads: mostly reading with a little viewing and, in particular, short stories.

Launch (November 1)
Dancing Girls, “Rape Fantasies” (November 3)
Dancing Girls, “Hair Jewellery” (November 10)
Old Babes in the Wood, “First Aid” (November 12)
Dancing Girls, “A Travel Piece” (November 17)
Margaret Atwood’s 84th Birthday (November 18)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Two Scorched Men” (November 19)
Dancing Girls, “The Resplendent Quetzel” (November 24)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Morte de Smudgie” (November 26)
Wrap-Up (November 29-30)

Thereafter, MA speaks more directly, at greater length, and she describes how it’s the man who’s victimized (both generally, treated as an alien, and specifically, as a pawn in this mother-daughter conflict).

But that’s not the story Gartner wants to discuss or the story she read (if she read it); she sees the woman as victimized.

“I don’t think that’s in the stories,” MA says. She tries to make a joke again, that perhaps Gartner has been reading some of MA’s other books. Gartner doesn’t laugh. MA offers a tangent to her book Survival, saying that it considers victimization in CanLit as a broader theme. Gartner ignores that invitation to shift the topic and asks if MA thinks she’s confused to which MA quickly replies no.

“You’re going to be a different person when you’re 80 than you are now,” MA says, in response to a series of questions that include whether she’d’ve come on the show to discuss her gardening and canoeing. (You wouldn’t have invited me for that? How do you know? Because, MA says, you never have.) But it’s hard to believe MA would respond differently at 80 to accusatory questions. She’s not telling anyone how to think—“If that’s the term you want to use, that’s fine,” she says at one point, tight-lipped and abrupt—she’s defining her own terms.

“Rape Fantasies” (First published in Fiddlehead and Toronto Life)

The funny thing is that a careful reading of this story—set in an office lunchroom (it feels like a cut-scene from The Edible Woman)—provides ample opportunity to discuss how characters grapple with overwhelming emotions, fears and sorrows, in response to an article in a women’s magazine.

Gartner’s question—about whether MA is a pessimist or optimist— could’ve included the narrator’s observation in “Rape Fantasies”: “My mother always said you shouldn’t dwell on unpleasant things and I generally agree with that, I mean, dwelling on them doesn’t make them go away. Though not dwelling on them doesn’t make them go away ether, when you come to think of it.”

They could’ve discussed what we can learn from reading and telling and sharing stories. How the women talk about their fantasies is varied and curious, informative about their personal experiences but also entertaining (and how the narrator’s jokes don’t elicit laughter as a response).

The funniest funny thing is this could be the story MA references in the interview, the humourous one—which seems incredible, and probably isn’t true (it’s probably that last, “up” story)—given how the narrator analyses her own “fantasies”, redefines the term, redresses power imbalances, and how she evades-bargains-attacks-complies…it all invites serious discussion about victimization, but it also makes me laugh out loud.

And there’s the ending: “…I think it would be better if you could get a conversation going. Like, how could a fellow do that to a person he’s just had a long conversation with, once you let them know you’re human, you have a life too, I don’t see how they could go ahead with it, right? I mean, I know it happens but I just don’t understand it, that’s the part I really don’t understand.”

But when you start the conversation with there only being two tracks—how do you get to having a conversation about the train?